How I Journal

In junior high English class, both in 7th grade, and 8th grade, we had a long running assignment; keep a journal. At least 40 pages for the 7th graders, and at least 20 pages for the 8th graders (shout out to a great English teacher, Bergie!).

For most of my classmates, this well known assignment was met with loud groans. For me, it was business as usual.

While some of my classmates figured out ways to hack the system...holding two pens at once so everything you wrote was doubled, I just went on my happy way (as happy as an angsty early teenager ever is).

You see, I had been journaling for a long time. I was already a pro!

I remember being delighted with the idea of diaries when I was barely old enough to write independently. Even then I was fascinated by pens and paper. I had the precious diaries that had the tiny keys and locks that kept my inner thoughts private. This was a very big deal before I had reached double digits in age.

I even remember sheepishly asking my Mom if it was okay if I put "bad words" in my diary.

My Mom shrugged and said, "It's your diary, you can write what you want to."

(activate rebellious mode)

By the time I reached high school, I started making a note of the time of my journal entries as well as the date. More times than not, I would give context clues within the entry as to where I was when writing (i.e. study hall, free time at the end of chemistry class, etc...). Eventually this evolved into noting the address, or closest approximation to an address that I could muster.

Like so many of us in the Information Age, eventually I went digital with my journal.

For me, this has only been in recent years. I went all in…out with the paper! In with the bits and bytes!

I discovered the app Day One, and I loved the features it offers. I got into Day One before they offered more features and went to a subscription model.

Day One allows me to export PDF files of my journals, which can then be OCR'ed (optical character recognition) which makes the PDF searchable.

This app allowed me to tag a specific GPS location in the entry, and will provide weather data at the time of the entry. It's like it automates the features of a commonplace journal!

There are other more modern features, like pulling in your social posts as well.

The portability is a huge plus as well. Wherever I have my phone, I have my journal. This portability allows me to dictate journal entries as I'm taking the dog on a late night walk. It allows me to write as quickly as the dictation can process my words.

Oh! The modern convenience!

Eventually came the realization of the horrifying possibility of data loss. What if all of my journal eggs were in this one basket and that basket had nothing but corrupted files? What if that big coronal mass ejection causes an EMP that wipes out my computers and all of my back ups?

Paranoia aside, the digital journal option offers me a lot of desirable features.

Day One allows me to export PDF files of my journals, which can then be OCR'ed (optical character recognition) which makes the PDF searchable. In theory, I can search for keywords, the name of a favorite restaurant from the road trip 8 years ago…or something similar.

When I remember, I can create a fresh export of the most current journal, and keep it digitally according to my current backup practices.

I love this high tech solution to keeping track of my inner most thoughts, to preserve them for myself and for my descendants.

I started to miss the feeling of pen on paper though. Pen on paper still seems important to me.

You see, I'm an only child, and both of my parents have long since passed.

I am the sole guardian of our family history. I have totes, and totes worth of it.

Old family photos, most of the names lost to history. Family documents...Army discharge papers for my grandfather, whom I never met. Random bits of documentation about my ancestors here and there.

I have the responsibility to keep it safe for my children, and eventually grandchildren, and beyond.

I became fascinated with this family history. Seeing my grandfather's signature on a document. Knowing that his hand touched that piece of paper...that family history became more real for me.

These thoughts started to enter my mind when I was exclusively using my digital journal. Yes, my words, my thoughts were being recorded...but what about that deeper personal connection?

I came up with a solution that has been serving me well, and eases my sense of responsibility in passing on family history: the analog and the digital journals now back each other up.

I'm very happy with this new system, and the flexibility it offers makes the process very smooth.

With this new system, I can make the journal entry in either the analog journal, or the digital journal.

Maybe this method will work for you!

Here's how I do it:

If I decide that I want to write in the analog journal first, I will also create a new entry in my digital journal so I can log the exact date, time, and location of the entry. In the digital journal, I simply write "Journal entry" in the digital journal, and also tag the entry with "journal entry." This reminds me that I need to transcribe the analog journal at some point.

A placeholder using the text “Journal entry” as well as a tag with the sea name helps me quickly see that there is a analog journal entry that needs to be transcribed into my digital journal.

When it comes time to transcribe, I use the dictation feature of my digital journal and read what I wrote in the analog journal, making any text corrections as needed. I then delete the tag and the text that says "Journal entry" at the top of the page.

The final step for me is to use a scanning app on my phone (my long time favorite is Scanner Pro), scan the pages in my analog journal that encompass the current entry, upload the scans as JPG files to the Photos app on my iPhone, then add that images to the digital journal entry.

If I am beginning the entry in the digital journal, I follow the same setup procedure, including the "Journal entry" text at the top of the entry, as well as the tag, but I simply create the entry in the digital journal.

Beginning the journal entry in the digital journal uses the exact same signifiers, the text “Journal entry” at the top of the entry as well as the Journal Entry tag. The only difference is that the text is created in the digital journal, then transcribed to the analog journal.

At a later time, I transcribe from the digital journal into the analog journal, scan, and upload the images of the handwritten pages to the digital entry.

The disadvantage with creating the entry first in the digital journal is that the analog journal is on hold until I catch up with adding the entries from the digital journal. (I can create multiple analog journal entries without affecting the chronology of entries in the digital journal).

It gets a bit confusing when I have a backlog of analog first entries interspersed with digital first entries, so I try to keep things up to date in a timely fashion.

When time allows, I am also recording all of my old journals in this fashion.

Thanks to weather records, I can know what the weather was in my hometown that day I was sitting in study hall, writing in the 10th grade. This gives that old school commonplace journal feel to the chronicling process.

I'm also chronicling my poetry and prose using this technique. When I was writing more poetry and prose, often I would simply notate it with a year, but I can still capture images of what my handwriting looked like at that time in my life...the way I setup words on the page...

I'm still finding bits of writing here and there that don't have nearly the detail that I would be interested in. I found what I believe to be a notebook with some commonplace journal qualities that my mother started keeping when I was a baby..."Hot today...he took a short nap, etc." There are no dates on these, and now there is no one around who could possibly give me insight into these entries. I am so curious!

Some might think this is a lot of effort. I’d like to think that it’s an act of love. Love for my family, and love for my descendants, but if I’m truly honest with myself, it’s an attempt at self preservation. Whether it is the analog, or the digital version of my thoughts that survive (assuming either does) some piece of me will be available for future historians to puzzle over.

It may be that my descendants don't have nearly the same interest in our family history as I do, but there may be those that come after me that will appreciate the meticulous nature of my journaling efforts.

In any case, this fulfills my need to self reflect in a way that can either be thumbed through curled up by a fire, or searched in a digital query.

Best of both worlds.